This is clever but sounds too much like something out of Hollywood. I'd prefer bland but respectable.
I don't entirely disagree, but I do think Catastrophic Risks In Self-Improving Systems can be useful in pointing out the exact problem that the Singularity Institute exists to solve. I'm not at all sure at all that it would make a good name for the organisation itself. But I do perhaps think it would raise fewer questions, and be less confusing than The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence or The Singularity Institute.
In particular, there would be little chance of confusion stemming from familiarity with Kurzweil's singularity from accelerating change.
There are lessons to be learned from Scientist are from Mars the Public is from Earth, and first impressions are certainly important. That said, this description is less over-exaggerated than it may at seem at first glance. The usage can be qualified in that the technical meanings of these words are established, mutually supportive and applicable.
Looking at the technical meaning of the words, the description is (perhaps surprisingly) accurate:
Catastrophic failure: Small changes in certain parameters of a nonlinear system can cause equilibria to appear or disappear, or to change from attracting to repelling and vice versa, leading to large and sudden changes of the behaviour of the system.
Catastrophe theory: Small changes in certain parameters of a nonlinear system can cause equilibria to appear or disappear, (...) leading to large and sudden changes of the behaviour of the system.
Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity (including the choice of inaction) will lead to a loss (an undesirable outcome). The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists (or existed).
Is the CRISIS mnemonic / acronym overly dramatic?
Crisis: From Ancient Greek κρίσις (krisis, “a separating, power of distinguishing, decision, choice, election, judgment, dispute”), from κρίνω (krinō, “pick out, choose, decide, judge”)
A crisis is any event that is, or expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community or whole society. Crises are deemed to be negative changes in the security, economic, political, societal or environmental affairs, especially when they occur abruptly, with little or no warning. More loosely, it is a term meaning 'a testing time' or an 'emergency event'.
Usage: crisis (plural crises)
Perhaps CRISIS is overly dramatic in the common usage. But one would quite easily be able to explain how the use of this term is be qualified, and this in it self gives an attractive angle to journalists. In the process they would, inadvertently in a sense, explain what the Singularity institute does and why their work is important.
Once, a smart potential supporter stumbled upon the Singularity Institute's (old) website and wanted to know if our mission was something to care about. So he sent our concise summary to an AI researcher and asked if we were serious. The AI researcher saw the word 'Singularity' and, apparently without reading our concise summary, sent back a critique of Ray Kurzweil's "accelerating change" technology curves. (Even though SI researchers tend to be Moore's Law agnostics, and our concise summary says nothing about accelerating change.)
Of course, the 'singularity' we're talking about at SI is intelligence explosion, not accelerating change, and intelligence explosion doesn't depend on accelerating change. The term "singularity" used to mean intelligence explosion (or "the arrival of machine superintelligence" or "an event horizon beyond which we can't predict the future because something smarter than humans is running the show"). But with the success of The Singularity is Near in 2005, most people know "the singularity" as "accelerating change."
How often do we miss out on connecting to smart people because they think we're arguing for Kurzweil's curves? One friend in the U.K. told me he never uses the world "singularity" to talk about AI risk because the people he knows thinks the "accelerating change" singularity is "a bit mental."
LWers are likely to have attachments to the word 'singularity,' and the term does often mean intelligence explosion in the technical literature, but neither of these is a strong reason to keep the word 'singularity' in the name of our AI Risk Reduction organization. If the 'singularity' term is keeping us away from many of the people we care most about reaching, maybe we should change it.
Here are some possible alternatives, without trying too hard:
We almost certainly won't change our name within the next year, but it doesn't hurt to start gathering names now and do some market testing. You were all very helpful in naming "Rationality Group". (BTW, the winning name, "Center for Applied Rationality," came from LWer beoShaffer.)
And, before I am vilified by people who have as much positive affect toward the name "Singularity Institute" as I do, let me note that this was not originally my idea, but I do think it's an idea worth taking seriously enough to bother with some market testing.